Finishing in Architecture
Polishing, Completing, Ending
1st Edition
Published on 30. June 2025
Book
Paperback/Softback
302 pages
978-1-032-72203-0 (ISBN)
Description
Finishing in Architecture: Polishing, Completing, Ending explores the topic of finishing and the fascinating physical and metaphysical implications of its various conceptions in architecture. Finishing is essential to all human practices and concepts of time, yet simultaneously it is largely impossible to identify an entirely finished state of being. As mortals, we organize our worlds into beginnings and endings, starts and finishes. Architecture's temporality, however, may contain something of both the mortal and immortal within it - a desire for permanence combined with lamentation over its impossibility.
While many approaches to finishing construct two opposed ontological conditions (the finished and the unfinished), this dualistic ploy neglects the complexity of architectural practice, cultural reception, and historiographic shifts in semiotics during the lifetime of a building. More nuanced approaches are examined in this collection of 38 essays and creative works from a diverse group of scholars, architects, and artists who conceptualize finishing not simply as a final outcome, but as an extended action, a mood that presumes an end is near, all the while working continuously toward (but never achieving) completion. It is here that the concept of finishing is not a state of being but a state of becoming, as an active thickening of time when the end is thought to be imminent but not yet attained. Finishing, more than a final endpoint, is a void state that is extended through efforts framing its territory, while never quite containing it.
From the material to the procedural and the conceptual, this volume explores the practices of finishing in architecture within three currents: surfaces, projects, and most broadly, architectural times. It will be of interest to students and instructors of architecture and design, architectural historians, and other scholars.
While many approaches to finishing construct two opposed ontological conditions (the finished and the unfinished), this dualistic ploy neglects the complexity of architectural practice, cultural reception, and historiographic shifts in semiotics during the lifetime of a building. More nuanced approaches are examined in this collection of 38 essays and creative works from a diverse group of scholars, architects, and artists who conceptualize finishing not simply as a final outcome, but as an extended action, a mood that presumes an end is near, all the while working continuously toward (but never achieving) completion. It is here that the concept of finishing is not a state of being but a state of becoming, as an active thickening of time when the end is thought to be imminent but not yet attained. Finishing, more than a final endpoint, is a void state that is extended through efforts framing its territory, while never quite containing it.
From the material to the procedural and the conceptual, this volume explores the practices of finishing in architecture within three currents: surfaces, projects, and most broadly, architectural times. It will be of interest to students and instructors of architecture and design, architectural historians, and other scholars.
More details
Language
English
Place of publication
London
United Kingdom
Publishing group
Taylor & Francis Ltd
Target group
College/higher education
Postgraduate and Undergraduate Advanced
Illustrations
70 s/w Abbildungen, 25 farbige Abbildungen, 61 s/w Photographien bzw. Rasterbilder, 25 Farbfotos bzw. farbige Rasterbilder, 9 s/w Zeichnungen
9 Line drawings, black and white; 25 Halftones, color; 61 Halftones, black and white; 25 Illustrations, color; 70 Illustrations, black and white
Dimensions
Height: 174 mm
Width: 246 mm
Thickness: 20 mm
Weight
652 gr
ISBN-13
978-1-032-72203-0 (9781032722030)
Copyright in bibliographic data and cover images is held by Nielsen Book Services Limited or by the publishers or by their respective licensors: all rights reserved.
Schweitzer Classification
Other editions
Additional editions
Paul Emmons | Marcia Feuerstein | Negar Goljan
Finishing in Architecture
Polishing, Completing, Ending
Book
06/2025
1st Edition
Routledge
€194.50
Shipment within 10-20 days
Paul Emmons | Marcia Feuerstein | Negar Goljan
Finishing in Architecture
Polishing, Completing, Ending
E-Book
06/2025
1st Edition
Routledge
€55.49
Available for download
Paul Emmons | Marcia Feuerstein | Negar Goljan
Finishing in Architecture
Polishing, Completing, Ending
E-Book
06/2025
1st Edition
Routledge
€55.49
Available for download
Persons
Editors
Paul Emmons is a registered architect and the Patrick and Nancy Lathrop Professor of Architecture at the Washington-Alexandria Architecture Center of Virginia Tech, where he directs the PhD program in Architecture + Design Research. His research on architecture drawing practices includes the book Drawing Imagining Building.
Marcia Feuerstein is a registered architect and Professor of Architecture Emerita at the Washington-Alexandria Architecture Center of Virginia Tech. Her research investigates links between theory, practice, and performance in architecture. One of her recent publications is Expanding Field of Architecture.
Negar Goljan is a Visiting Assistant Professor at James Madison University School of Art, Design and Art History and a PhD Candidate in Architecture + Design Research at the Washington-Alexandria Architecture Center of Virginia Tech. Her research considers poetics in architecture, specifically atmospheric drawings of Etienne-Louis Boullee.
Associate Editor
Camila Mancilla is an architect and PhD candidate in Architecture + Design Research at the Washington-Alexandria Architecture Center of Virginia Tech studying architecture representation through collage, multi-media, and architectural fragments. Her research focuses on cutting in the work of Gordon Matta-Clark.
Paul Emmons is a registered architect and the Patrick and Nancy Lathrop Professor of Architecture at the Washington-Alexandria Architecture Center of Virginia Tech, where he directs the PhD program in Architecture + Design Research. His research on architecture drawing practices includes the book Drawing Imagining Building.
Marcia Feuerstein is a registered architect and Professor of Architecture Emerita at the Washington-Alexandria Architecture Center of Virginia Tech. Her research investigates links between theory, practice, and performance in architecture. One of her recent publications is Expanding Field of Architecture.
Negar Goljan is a Visiting Assistant Professor at James Madison University School of Art, Design and Art History and a PhD Candidate in Architecture + Design Research at the Washington-Alexandria Architecture Center of Virginia Tech. Her research considers poetics in architecture, specifically atmospheric drawings of Etienne-Louis Boullee.
Associate Editor
Camila Mancilla is an architect and PhD candidate in Architecture + Design Research at the Washington-Alexandria Architecture Center of Virginia Tech studying architecture representation through collage, multi-media, and architectural fragments. Her research focuses on cutting in the work of Gordon Matta-Clark.
Content
1. Introduction: In Lieu of an Afterword 2. Works at Work, Today and Tomorrow INTERLUDE: Creative Works 1 3. Prelude to the Interludes: Creative Works 4. Dust-Cot: A Cast of Interior Affinities 5. Knitting Tensile Membranes for Ornament, Tactility, and Visual Effects 6. Sharp Shadows: Cutting an Architectural Treatise SECTION 1 Surfaces: Finishing as Polishing 7. Introduction 8. Polishing: Finishing that is Never Finished 9. Sine Fine: On Polishing and Finishing Ancient Roman Domestic Architecture 10. Ruskin and Emotive Architectural Finishes 11. 'Finishing' the 'Unfinished': The History of Cladded Surfaces of Hans Scharoun's Berlin Philharmonic Concert Hall 12. The Finishing of Surfaces in the Work of Carlo Scarpa 13. On the Inadequacy of Accounting for Architectural Finish 14. Brutalism: From Modern Utopia to the Modernity of the Real INTERLUDE: Creative Works 2 15. Pulp Fiction: In Conversation with Marco Frascari on the Craft of Architectural Drawing 16. Pursuit of Design Extremes 17. The Expanding World of LEAPs SECTION 2 Projects: Finishing as Completing 18. Introduction 19. Abandoned Incomplete/Complete Abandonment: Theme and Variations 20. Building as New Beginning: The Absolute Negativity of the Maison Dom-ino 21. Undoing Architecture: Gestaltung as Light-Space-Time Interpenetrations 22. Architect/Client Philip Johnson: Between Seagram and the House at New Canaan 23. Wolf House: A Thrice-Finished Prefab Midcentury Home 24. Finishing and the Viridic: Reflections on the Preservation of Historic Landscapes 25. (Un)finished Architectures and their Adaptations 26. Completing in Time: Building on Site to Find a Different Ending INTERLUDE: Creative Works 3 27. A Paroidia: The Belly of an Old Drawing 28. Backward/Forward: 'Non-Finito' 29. Constructing Shadows in Marfa SECTION 3 Times: Finishing as Endings 30. Introduction 31. Hamiltonian' Finishing: The Global-Local Architecture of Projective Geometry 32. Zen: The Finishing of Architecture 33. Surrealist Alchemy and the Transubstantiation of Reuse 34. Through the Lens of a Building's Afterlife: Institutionalizing Knowledge of Architectural Heritage as Performative Practice 35. How to Unfinish Gracefully: An Encomium of Blank Walls, Stairs-to Nowhere, and- 36. Always Unfinished: The German Pavilion in Barcelona 37. Open-Ended Final Scenes for the Architectural Fascist Legacy in Bozen-Bolzano 38. Liminal Temporality and the Architecture of 'The Backrooms' POSTLUDE 39. Towers of Babel by Marco Frascari